Theodore the Poet

Edgar Lee Masters 1868 (Garnett) – 1950 (Elkins Park)



As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours
On the shore of the turbid Spoon
With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish's burrow,
Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead,
First his waving antennae, like straws of hay,
And soon his body, colored like soap-stone,
Gemmed with eyes of jet.
And you wondered in a trance of thought
What he knew, what he desired, and why he lived at all.
But later your vision watched for men and women
Hiding in burrows of fate amid great cities,
Looking for the souls of them to come out,
So that you could see
How they lived, and for what,
And why they kept crawling so busily
Along the sandy way where water fails
As the summer wanes.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

39 sec read
118

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFGHIJKLMNMOP
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 669
Words 131
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 17

Edgar Lee Masters

Edgar Lee Masters was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist. more…

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